The past few years have given rise to a proliferation of portable media players, such as Apple's iPod devices and MP3 players. In order to transfer media content, such as songs, to the portable media players, the portable media players are typically attached to associated desktop computers, and song files are transferred from the desktop computer to the portable media player. The storage space available on the portable media players varies significantly. For example, some media players may have 512 megabytes (MB) of storage space while others may have 60 gigabytes (GB) of storage space. In comparison, the media collections of the users, which are stored on the associated desktop computers, may require anywhere from a few hundred megabytes to several hundred gigabytes of storage space. Thus, it is not uncommon for a user's media collection stored on his or her desktop computer to be larger than the storage capacity of the user's portable media player. As such, the user must typically select a subset of his or her media collection to store on his or her portable media player at any given time.
The issue that results from the above scenario is that the user must reconnect the user's portable media player to his or her desktop computer each time media content from his or her media collection is desired. If the user is away from his or her desktop computer, which is typically the case, the user is unable to acquire media content from his or her media collection. Thus, there is a need for a system and method enabling a portable media player to obtain media content from the user's media collection without reconnecting the portable media player to an associated user system, such as a desktop computer, storing the user's media collection.